A new Korean restaurant Kimchee at a former Japanese restaurant Matsuri Holborn branch, few months after Matsuri was closed due to fire. The name “Kimchee” doesn’t sound sophisticated, but contrary to its cheap name, the interior is sleek and modern – with dark wood furniture, birch (bamboo?) lampshades, and bright + huge open kitchen. I thought it was produced by legendary restauranteur Alan Yau because of its modern ethnic style, but I guess not, as Kimchee is not listed on his website.

About food. We ordered two appetizers, kimchee and Modum Namul (*unlike Korea or USA, Korean restaurants in London don’t serve free side dishes or banchan. If they do, they give you only 1 or 2 dishes), and three main dishes of raw beef Bibimbap, beef Dolsot (stone pot) Bibimbap, and Galbitang. I don’t analyse each dish but say in one word, all the dishes we ordered were not great – looking good in nice plates and bowls, but were bland and didn’t have much taste. I can tell that they don’t cook with love and passion. It was not only our opinion – Time Out and Metro also talk bad about this restaurant. There were some Asian (I mean East Asian, not South Asian as British English suggests) but I don’t think there were any Koreans. Probably word of mouth has already spread among Korean community.

Their service had some problem as well. Started well – the staffs were friendly at the beginning and order and serving were smooth, but ended badly. The bill and my credit card were left untouched for a while until I finally stood up and asked for service. And the response was bad – no apology, no smile. We almost bursted with fury. We were already frustrated with their food, and their attitude was a final blow. Yes, the restaurant is cool and reasonable, but we don’t think we are going back there again.

To have a good Korean food, I guess I have to travel all the way down south to a big Korean Town of New Molden…

The new facility has a sandy beach and rocks, and an underwater viewing area where visitors can watch the birds diving for fish during feeding time, as well as a nursery with a chick incubation unit and a pool where baby penguins can learn how to swim. The new pool is the largest created for penguins in England, which is four times bigger and three times deeper at 2m, than the old one. The Penguin Beach will eventually house 200 penguins. The exhibit also features a replica of the field station in Antarctica, where London Zoo’s penguinologist works.

You can take kids here, or you can come to see these adorable and funny creatures to cheer you up, when you are a bit low or stressed out – it’ll be much cheaper than seeing a therapist and possibly more effective.

A comprehensive guide to bathing water quality around the UK, Good Beach Guide 2011 launched today. Published by the Marine Conservation Society(MCS) since 1987, the Guide began life as a ‘Golden List’ of beaches in 1960. Tony and Daphne Wakefield had lost their six-year-old daughter, after she contracted polio swimming at a sewage contaminated beach. Outraged that raw sewage was being pumped into the sea, the Wakefields published a new ‘Golden List’ of clean bathing beaches. This, along with other clean sea campaigns, led to the introduction of European standards for bathing water quality in 1976, and massive investment by the water industry to clean up raw sewage (quoted fromGood Beach Guide).

The MCS tests water quality at 782 sites across the UK, under the EU’s Bathing Water Directive rules. This year’s results suggest that the number of beaches given the top rating was the third highest in its 24-year history: 461 beaches gained its top “recommended” award, 42 more than last year, although 46 sites failed to reach the mandatory minimum level of “basic pass”.

The basic standards of water quality were set in European law 35 year ago, but stricter rules will come into force from 2015 due to the revision of the Bathing Water Directive, and these will start to be monitored from 2012. As a result, the MCS concerns that almost double the number of beaches could fail in future years. It is still legal to pump sewage into the sea and not enough of those outlets were being monitored. Only a quarter are monitored to check how often they are putting untreated sewage into the sea.

Water pollution can give swimmers stomach upsets or ear, nose and throat infections. Also it is disgusting to swim in the sea mixed with water from sewage (I didn’t know it is still legal)!! Check out Good Beach Guide 2011 Recommended Beaches, before you decide where to have your beach vacation in UK.

I went to Broadway Market after many months, and found some new places opened. Well-liked l’eau à LA BOUCHE was full as we anticipated, we tried a new Italian café Dino Deli. Decorated with mix & match of second hand furniture which don’t have much character either, shabby rug and quirky objects, Dino is like a scruffy student café near college and does not meet hip Broadway Market standard. However, their sandwich and coffee were OK and people came anyway.

The London Fire Brigade Incident Mapping showing the number of the fire related incidents across London, the first of its kind in UK, has been made available online today. Based on the Metropolitan Police’s crime map launched in 2008, typing in your postcode shows you the data on how many incidents firefighters have been called to in the past year. You can also filter the numbers by types; Fires (Primary/Secondary), Deliberate Fires (Primary/Secondary), False Alarms (All Automatic Fire Alarms/Good Intent/Malicious) and Special Services (Road Traffic Collisions/Shut in lift releases).

An intention of the London Fire Brigade (LFB) is to encourage residents, businesses and councils in places with a higher number of incidents to take action to make their area safer, but like Scotland Yard’s local crime and policing website for England and Wales, it may cause fear among people who live or plan to move to London’s fire hotspots, including Croydon in Southeast London, which had the most serious fires and arson attacks last year.

I checked my postcode and the numbers come ‘average’ in all incident types. But just few steps away is marked as ‘High’ – am I suppose to be pleased or not?

J+A café is located on the ground floor of former Victorian diamond-cutting factory, in a courtyard between Clerkenwell Road and Great Sutton Street, accessed via a small alleyway. Inspired by “traditional family values and good old-fashioned hospitality”, the space with red brick walls, secondhand wooden furniture, and hanging silver lump shades, is cozy and warm, resembling rustic country diner. Outside seating area is calm and quiet as the café is not facing to any street, and you don’t have to worry about inhaling fumes from cars.

J+A claims to believe in “healthy and wholesome home-cooking and baking”, using simple recipes and fresh produce (as any other popular cafés in London). They offers breakfast, lunch, and weekend brunch. Breakfasts are British regular comfort foods including English breakfast, omelette, and pancake, whereas the lunch menu offers more variety such as daily specials of pie or stew, soup, quiche or Tartlet, and baked potato, as well as regular sandwiches and salads.

On our first visit, we ordered Club Sandwich and daily sandwich special with lamb. Chicken, bacon and lamb were a bit dry and were hard to swallow without a help of water. I wish the bread was toasted as well. I can’t judge their food with only one visit, but I have to say that I wouldn’t order these two dishes again… Food was disappointing on the day, but J+A is the perfect place for a cup of tea or coffee on a nice + warm day (though maybe a bit dark on a bad weather).

We saw a silent documentary “The Great White Silence (1924)” , the official film record of Captain Robert Falcon Scott‘s Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole from 1910 to 1913, which opens in cinemas on May 20. The expedition’s official photographer and cinematographer Herbert Ponting filmed almost every aspect of the expedition: the scientific work, life in camp and the local wildlife. In 1924, he re-edited the footage as a narrative, introducing intertitles as well as incorporating his own stills, maps, portraits, paintings and animated models, complete with vivid tinting and toning. BFI National Archive has restored the film using the latest photochemical and digital techniques and reintroduced the film’s sophisticated use of colour.

I was no interest in expedition of any kind and was not so keen to see the movie, with very little knowledge of early South pole expeditions that I studied long time ago. I was even worried to fall a sleep during the screening, but the film was far more exciting than I expected. In addition to the lives of the expedition members who had lived 100 years ago and preparations for the journey, the film also shows us living the harsh ice lands’ creatures including funny Adélie penguins, warm interaction of mother and cub seals, killer whales chasing the cub, and newly hatched seagull chicks, as well as great landscape of the South pole such as huge iceberg and ice formation – it was vivid, dramatic and truly awesome. And the film is beautiful matched with lyrical and modern new score by Simon Fisher Turner, including pre-recorded elements and relevant ‘found sounds’ such as Terra Nova ship’s bell and scores from some of the records played by members of the expeditions using the expedition’s original gramophone. I enjoyed from the beginning til the end, on contrary to my prediction.

After the cheerful footage of the base and cute animals, Scott’s long and tough journey to the South Pole started but ended with tragedy, with huge disappoint ment after finding out that Norwegian Amundsen expedition team reached the goal first. The ending was very sad – Scott and his men ended their lives, when a fierce blizzard prevented them from making any progress, just 11 miles /18 km away from the depot. It was a well-known fact but still made me almost cry…